MONT THALETAT BY FRANCISQUE NOAILLY

FRANCISQUE NOAILLY (1855-1942) 

Thaletat (1,638m -5,374ft)
Algeria

In Montagnes de Kabylie , oil on canvas, 1908 

The mountain 

Thaletat (1,638m -5,374ft) ) is one of the Djurdjura peaks in Kabylie (Algeria). Thaletat is located in the Akouker Massif which occupies the center of the Djurdjura range. To the north, its rocks drop almost a single jet on the valley of Timeghras. To the south, it is dominated by the Lalla-Khadidja cone, the highest peak of the Tellian Atlas. The word Thaletat means "auricular" in Kabyle. The French gave the mountain the name "Hand of the Jew" because, according to the natives, its appearance of a six-fingered hand. According to legend, the mount was the place of prayer of a Jewish ascetic.

The painter 
Louis François Marie Noailly, known as Francisque Noailly, was born in Marseille in 1855. After studying at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Marseille, he studied with William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
From 1875, he performed his military service in Algeria in the Zouaves regiment. He gets married in Algiers and installs his workshop in the district of La Redoute.From its wide windows, the view stretched from Bouzaréah to Cape Matifou and plunged into the port which he could look at without ever being dazzled except by the beauty of the view.
Landscapes, portraits and especially scenes typical of Algerian life are treated with the same talent. The port, the city, the streets of the Algiers' Kasbah, the indigenous interiors and the Jebel are the frames. Vendor of donuts, child guiding a blind man, women returning from the source to their mechta, odalisques in a Moorish court, small trades ... these are his subjects. In his paintings, oil or watercolors, he plays with shadows, light and against the light: dockers unloading a swing or woman weaving a carpet.
He taught for many years at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, rue des Généraux Morris, and was responsible, as director and professor, for the School of Decorative and Industrial Arts. A contemporary of Rochegrosse, Deshayes, Etienne Dinet and many others, he was part of the Orientalist painters' society and in 1935 received the first painting prize, Léon Cauvy, awarded by the Artistic Union of North Africa.
Francisque Noailly died in his house in Algiers, surrounded by his family, and left the memory of a right and sensitive man who hide his feelings under a grumpy aspect.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau